The invention relates to a circuit arrangement of a sensor-triggered control and/or display system with a digital signal processor (=DSP) in the context of a safety-critical application and a method for monitoring a DSP in the context of a safety-critical application, wherein the DSP determines actual position and/or attitude of an object from the position and/or attitude signals of position and/or attitude sensors.
Digital signal processors and their possible applications are generally known. It is also known that such DSPs can be used in the context of signal processing of position and attitude signals of position and attitude sensors where complex systems can be implemented with low development costs and circuits. Because of the enormous complexity of such integrated circuits and also the generally not provided public accessibility of the circuit diagrams, these cannot generally be fully analyzed or fully tested. For safety-critical applications, however, this is a basic requirement for the application of such circuits; the possibility must at least be provided to be able to detect faults that may occur in the circuit by means of a redundant and independently developed second circuit. In principle it would be possible to use two DSPs from mutually independent sources and to detect faults by comparing the signals output by the two DSPs, but with an almost doubling of the production costs, so that this possibility for an inexpensive circuit is eliminated.
It is thus the object of the invention to find a possibility of coupling the advantages of such a DSP in terms of its simple development with the necessity for monitoring without having to resort to two different DSPs.